Monday, February 22, 2016

More on high death rates of 'white, less educated Americans' due to alcohol abuse, suicide, and drug overdose. Whites pessimistic about finances, but expected too much. Thought they'd do as well as parents, but US 'booming industrial economy' has 'slowed significantly'. Also, parents did better because African Americans weren't getting fair share-NY Times op ed, Andrew J. Cherlin

Yet
I’d like to propose a different answer: what social scientists call
reference group theory. The term “reference group” was pioneered by the
social psychologist Herbert H. Hyman in 1942, and the theory was developed
by the Columbia sociologist Robert K. Merton in the 1950s. It tells us
that to comprehend how people think and behave, it’s important to
understand the standards to which they compare themselves.

How
is your life going? For most of us, the answer to that question means
comparing our lives to the lives our parents were able to lead. As
children and adolescents, we closely observed our parents. They were our
first reference group.

And
here is one solution to the death-rate conundrum: It’s likely that many
non-college-educated whites are comparing themselves to a generation
that had more opportunities than they have,whereas many blacks and
Hispanics are comparing themselves to a generation that had fewer
opportunities.

African-Americans,
however, didn’t get a fair share of the blue-collar prosperity of the
postwar period. They may look back to a time when discrimination
deprived their parents of equal opportunities. Many Hispanics may look
back to the lower standard of living their parents experienced in their
countries of origin. Whites are likely to compare themselves to a
reference group that leads them to feel worse off. Blacks and Hispanics
compare themselves to reference groups that may make them feel better
off.

The
sociologist Timothy Nelson and I observed this phenomenon in interviews
with high-school-educated young adult men in 2012 and 2013. A
35-year-old white man who did construction jobs said, “It’s much harder
for me as a grown man than it was for my father.” He remembered his
father saying that back when he was 35, “‘I had a house and I had five
kids or four kids.’ You know, ‘Look where I was at.’ And I’m like,
‘Well, Dad, things have changed.’”

African-American
men were more upbeat.One said: “I think there are better opportunities
now because first of all, the economy’s changing. The color barrier is
not as harsh as it was back then.”

In
addition, national surveys show striking racial and ethnic differences
in satisfaction with one’s social standing relative to one’s parents.
The General Social Survey conducted by the research organization NORC at
the University of Chicago has asked Americans in its biennial surveys
to compare their standard of living to that of their parents. In 2014,
according to my analysis, among 25- to 54-year-olds without college
degrees, blacks and Hispanics were much more positive than whites: 67
percent of African-Americans and 68 percent of Hispanics responded “much
better” or “somewhat better,” compared with 47 percent of whites.

But
we size ourselves up based on more than just our parents. White workers
historically have compared themselves against black workers, taking
some comfort in seeing a group that was doing worse than them. Now,
however, the decline of racial restrictions in the labor market and the
spread of affirmative action have changed that. Non-college-graduate
whites in the General Social Survey are more likely to agree that
“conditions for black people have improved” than are comparable blacks
themselves, 68 percent to 53 percent.

Reference
group theory explains why people who have more may feel that they have
less. What matters is to whom you are comparing yourself. It’s not that
white workers are doing worse than African-Americans or Hispanics.